A Terribly Strange Bed

Ikhtisar

A winning streak at a downmarket gambling den in Paris leads to a lavish drinking spree. The offer of coffee to help sober up is not all that it first seems. Our protagonist finds himself in a strange bed for the night in a house of thieves and murderers. And it turns out to be a very strange bed indeed... a bed cunningly designed with murder in mind. A spine-chilling tale... especially if you listen at bedtime.

Ulasan

There's more than a little of Edgar Allen Poe about this early piece from Wilkie Collins. Specifically "The Pit and the Pendulum" or "The Cask of Amontillado"; the short story as set piece horror, the 19th century equivalent of Saw or Captivity. In playing on the uncanny nature of an unfamiliar bedroom there's also a degree to which it calls forward to MR James's "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" – and given that's one of the scariest short stories ever written, it's a very good thing to put me in mind of.Short and satisfying. Unsettling rather than outright terrifying, but in some ways that's harder to achieve. The cold prickle on the back of your neck, the sense of things not quite being as safe as you'd assumed, stays with you a lot longer than a jump scare or body horror.